Crystal Skull comes
to us from Maxis, a company not usually associated with adventure
games. With that in mind, it is, perhaps, not surprising that their
first entry in the field is somewhat weak.

The story is set in the
time of the Aztec empire, during the reign of Motecuhzoma II, known
more familiarly (though incorrectly) as “Montezuma II”.
It is just before the arrival of the Spanish, and Motecuhzoma sees
bad omens everywhere, including his dreams.

A recurring figure in the
dreams is Quetzal, birdkeeper in the royal zoo, and our hero. The
emperor wants to see him, and orders Snake Skirt (his trusted advisor)
to bring Quetzal to the palace. Snakey has other ideas, however; he
orders the guards to kill Quetzal instead.

So
at the start, Quetzal must avoid the guards and come up with a safe
way to visit Motecuhzoma to learn what’s going on. When he gets there,
the emperor orders him to find the crystal skull, and the rest of
the game is taken up with Quetzal’s efforts to obtain the mysterious
artifact.

The interface is very simple.
The main cursor changes shape as it moves around hot spots on the
screen: a pointing arrow for movement, an eye for something to look
at, a talk balloon for people to talk to, and a hand for items that
can be picked up or manipulated.

At the bottom of the screen
is the toolbar, where you can save/restore, examine your inventory,
pick up some info on Aztec culture, bring up a map, shapeshift, or
get a hint for a difficult situation.

The map is not a typical
automap; it is complete when you look at it, and some locations are
“enabled”, meaning you just click on them to go there. Only
a few of these locations are enabled on any section of the map. While
this cuts down on some travel time, for the most part you’ll still
do a lot of walking around.

The inventory pouch shows
everything Quetzal is carrying. Using an item is simply a matter of
picking it up with the cursor, then clicking the cursor where you
want to use the item. If an object can’t be used in a particular situation,
you can’t take it from the inventory.

The in-game hint system
is extensive, with clues and answers for just about every puzzle or
difficult situation. Each set of hints begins with a vague nudge,
and proceeds on, becoming more obvious until the complete answer is
revealed. You must choose at the start of the game whether or not
the hints will be active. If you decide not to have hints, the only
way to get them later would be to start a new game.

Conversations
are usually begun by clicking on a person, although occasionally they
happen automatically. Sometimes, there is no real dialogue; the person
just tells you something. At other times, Quetzal must say something
or respond to a question. When this happens, three small pictures
of Quetzal appear at the bottom of the screen. Each represents a different
response, and you decide which one he gives by clicking on it.

Saving positions is somewhat
primitive. You don’t get a fancy screen where you can type in a description.
Instead, you specify the actual file name according to standard DOS
conventions, eight characters with a three-character extension. The
one good thing about this is, the number of saves is limited only
by disk space. Since the files are under 2K apiece, you can have as
many saved games as you need.

Some people may be worried
about scenes of violence, especially as the Aztecs were famous (or
infamous) for their blood rites. While they certainly did kill many
thousands – both their own people and war captives – as sacrifices,
this is not a part of Crystal Skull. There are no gory bodies
or gruesome visuals here. One prisoner of war does have his heart
cut out, but this is shown from behind the high priest, and more by
implication than anything else. In this respect, at least, the designers
showed good sense by not dwelling on the unpleasant or sensationalistic.

Graphically, the game is
pretty, which is only to be expected as the resolution is 640x480x256.
The view is third-person for a change, with Quetzal on the screen
all the time, set against a background of authentic-looking Aztec
buildings and the like.

Indeed, a lot of research
obviously went into this game. Wherever you are, you can click the
codex icon to see a screen or two of information on how the current
location relates to Aztec culture. All the characters appear to be
dressed in typical Aztec style.

So
it’s a great pity that all this effort went for nothing, because while
the setting is authentic, the characters aren’t. They run around with
twentieth century attitudes and twentieth century speech. When references
are made to Swiss army knives, George Harrison, open-heart surgery
(meaning the Aztec blood rite of cutting out hearts), and similar,
the atmosphere is completely destroyed. Any feeling of being in Aztec
times rapidly disappears soon after the game begins.

Perhaps the designers thought
this would inject a little humor into the game. If so, they thought
wrong. All it does is make a farce of the whole thing.

Not content with that alone,
they also bring in time travel, with Quetzal going back to the founding
of the Aztec Empire. Much of the game, in fact, takes place during
that time period. Why? I don’t know, except that time travel seems
to be “in” these days for adventures, and possibly the designers
felt they should jump on the bandwagon. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t
add anything worthwhile to the game.

There doesn’t, for that
matter, seem to be much worthwhile about this game in the first place.
Quetzal hunts around, finds the skull, and then he and his girlfriend
end up in modern-day Mexico at the finale. Perhaps there is a good
reason for this, but if so, I couldn’t say what it is, because of
the one techical problem I had with Crystal Skull: the sound.

At the start, everything
was fine, although occasionally a word or two was clipped from someone’s
speech. A bit annoying, but aside from that, the dialogue was clear
and understandable. Partway through the game, that suddenly changed,
for no discernible cause.

People began talking high
and fast, rather like the Three Chipmunks. I finally traced that down
to Quicktime for Windows (which the game uses), where I made some
changes in the control panel to bring the speech back to normal. This
had to be done more than once during play, but at least the speech
worked.

Then,
during the last section of the game, I lost the dialogue completely.
Nothing anyone said came through at all; there was total silence when
they were talking (or supposed to be talking). Oddly, there was no
problem with the background sounds or music; those always came through
perfectly.

With no text subtitles
available, getting through the final portion was difficult, although
the hint screen was helpful in this situation. Often, just looking
at the questions there was enough to provide some direction. Still,
the hints only helped with the puzzles; the final explanation was
given by the Shaman in the game proper and was lost to me, since I
couldn’t hear it.

As far as the puzzles are
concerned, most are no great shakes, and some are just dumb. At one
point, you enter the marketplace and do some trading of items you
have for other objects. Then the boatman turns up, and the only thing
he’ll take as payment is something you traded away earlier…and he
doesn’t appear until after you’ve given the item away. So you have
to return to the market and trade around again to get the item back.

Elsewhere, you receive
a pass from Motecuzhoma to get by a guard so you can leave town. Only
the pass doesn’t work; you actually need that for something else later
in the game, and have to find another way around the guard. Things
like this don’t add much, if anything, to the play value.

Overall, The Crystal
Skull is a disappointment. While pretty to look at, the game offers
little of substance besides the culture notes. The puzzles are often
dreary, and the atmosphere is lacking. This is one of those products
that is neither terrible nor good, only mediocre. What could have
been a fascinating visit to Aztec times turns out to be merely silly
and dull.

Just Adventure + Assigned
Grade: C

System Requirements:

PC:
486/DX2/66
8MB RAM
2X CD-ROM drive
SVGA
Sound card
M ouse
Win 3.1, Win ’95

Also available for Macintosh